Volume 19 Page 09

Hey, this page looks okay for something drawn by the Sickest Person in the World. (Feeling much better now, thanks.)

Though seriously, if I do another comic after WPK, I’m learning Google Sketchup or some other 3D rendering program, because it’s clear I’ll never learn how to just draw a ship. I can barely manage thumbs.

Discussion (3) ¬

You may be unhappy with your efforts in perspective, but to my eye, expecially your freehand perspective has a special quality in itself. There is a degree of abstraction to it that fits perfectly to your overall style. Miller was praised high and low for it in “the return of the dark knight”. Myself, I think this “Non-euclidic” perspective is what distingushes your work from others moving somewhere along “line claire” like you. I might even go farther and declare this “esprit naive” of yours is the small spark Hergé lacked. Compared to yours, “Tintin” looks sterile in its perfection.

I hope very much, when you master constructed perspective one day, you see what I mean then, so that you can return to this style, then a decision of purpose!

Well, now, when I was still posting more often in your comments, I never held back I am a big fan of your art. But there is a reason for it, you are GOOD!

Though I would give my left thumb for my art to look “sterile in its perfection.”

It’s funny that more than one person has mentioned “ligne claire,” because that’s a conscious decision based on not wanting to do huge amounts of work! A few years ago I read Graham’s King City back-to-back with Stokoe’s Orc Stain and I will never understand where a guy like Stokoe gets the time to draw that much detail. Manga artists have minions to draw individual leaves, but I figure Stokoe must be able to enter in some sort of drawing trance to get that much done.

I grew up on Tintin and the Sunday funnies (my grandfather would send a month’s worth every month in a big manilla envelope when I lived overseas. It was the high-point of my month.)

I remember being a voracious reader of weird fiction when I was a kid (as well as a lot of what you’d probably call soft scifi nowadays); I dreamed of new worlds and strange gods, of magic and science and wonder.

And then I grew up, and grew tired. I want to blame the internet, and being exposed to the nitpickiness of geek culture, but I think moving back to the English-speaking world after years of getting broken-in books at a second-hand bookstores did it too.

That was back before I got a thousand choices, most of them terrible.

But Water Phoenix King.

Ah, Water Phoenix King.

Every time I load a new page, I feel like a kid again; I can’t remember ever feeling disappointed by the gift of a new WPK page.